When the English cricket team practiced at Lord’s for the second Investec Ashes Test beginning Thursday, a 15-year-old left-arm seamer was seen bowling at them. Not that the England batsmen were aware of the surname of Arjun Tendulkar who had joined the other bowlers at the nets to help the English cricket team prepare for the upcoming Test match against Australia. But young Arjun, son of legendary cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, was surely impressive maintaining a good line and length throughout the training session. His bowling action was also pleasing.

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It was surely not the ideal preparation for England’s batsmen who will be facing the left-arm pace attack of Mitchell Johnson on the cricket pitch. But Arjun Tendulkar seemed quite happy with the accomplishment. England assistant coach Paul Farbrace was seen congratulating the young talent at the end of the training session.

Arjun also chatted with some of the England players and they were surprised when they came to know about his age, according to ESPN Cricinfo.

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Sachin was a regular at the MCC Academy when he was part of the Indian cricket team and now it is his son Arjun who uses facilities of the club which is based at Lord’s cricket ground.

The Tendulkar family has an apartment near Lord’s and it is often spotted there during this time of the year. It was at the request of Neil Burns, the former county keeper, who is a friend of Sachin Tendulkar, that Arjun was allowed to bowl at the nets.

MUMBAI: Cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar unveiled a special lot of silver coins with his face, signature and name embossed on them in Mumbai, Friday. The collection is launched by Valuemart Gold & Jewels, in association with Diamond India.

Speaking on the occasion, the Bharat Ratna awardee said, “I have no hesitation in saying we are a talented side and there are some special players in the team. I know that they have not been able to produce the kind of results or rather live up to the expectation of the people, but things can change.”

The World Cup would be held in Australia and New Zealand in February-March next year.

“This is the time when the team requires support. When you are winning, you are in a good frame of mind but when you are not winning and when you know a billion people are behind you, with you, the mindset changes immediately. I have full confidence in our team. I am sure we will have a good time,” said that cricket legend.

He also underlined that things have changed a lot in the field of cricket.

The master blaster, who used to get “five paisa as pocket money” when he was growing up, also recalled how the Indian team had struggled before finishing runners-up to Australia in the 2003 World Cup in South Africa.

“I remember in 2003, the New Zealand tour before we got to the finals (of World Cup) wasn’t a great one for us. We went to South Africa and there were some side matches that we lost. And then we all started thinking that we need to plan differently, play differently and it worked for us,” said Tendulkar.

NEW DELHI: Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni is keen to continue as skipper of the Indian team in all three formats. The Indian captain has said that it will be unfair to burden a new player with the mantle of captaincy as just one year is left for the World Cup.

“I think, it’s a point of no return with the World Cup literally one year away from now. It won’t give a new guy the ideal time to play, at least, 70-80-90 games beginning to the World Cup, that’s what we would like to have him play before the World Cup”, Dhoni said.

“I understand the pressure, it’s not always that you turn up and at the same time, you get the kind of things which give you more experience than the others. So, we have to go through it,” he said at a promotional event here on Monday.

Last year, Dhoni had said that he might have to give up a format to lead India’s title defence in 2015 but would take a final call only at the end of 2013.

“I was really fortunate to see where I am right now with the amount of cricket that we are playing these days. As of now, it’s looking good. The body is closely knit together. How it will be (in future), I don’t know but so far so good,” he said.

Dhoni, India’s World Cup winning captain, also talked about the recent South Africa tour where India lost both the ODI and Test series. He said that India’s performance on the tour showed they had promising players, who would only get better with the exposure on upcoming trips.

Yes, we had some tough times. We had a bad session. We had one really bad session because of which we were on the losing side,” he said.

However, as always, Dhoni picked up the positives from the Proteas series.

“I think the process is more important. The last couple of series before the South African series were I can’t even say a decent or a bad one, it can go worse than that, but the good thing is that at least we know the players are there. We had a lot of good sessions in South Africa.

Dhoni’s bowlers were unable to bowl South Africa out in the second innings of the First Test despite having a score of 457 runs to defend, and the captain acknowledged they required progress on that front. “We have bowlers who can take 20 wickets but still this is one area where we need to improve. I think on the wickets that are helpful we have done well. Outside India, at times, you get wickets where we have to hit the deck hard and that goes opposite to what our bowlers actually bowl.